Quote Originally Posted by CrufflerSteve View Post
I have a question about the calculations during President Shrub and the Bummer. When we started our imperial wars I understand they were not in the budget. They were emergency that came off budget to make the picture look better. It's a loathsome way of accounting and I believe Bummer followed Bush the Lesser's methods. Does this turn up in these figures?

Steve
This is based on misrepresentations made by the Democrats. The Iraq and Afghanistan operations were not included in the budget but rather funded by supplemental appropriations. Their costs were included in the deficit figures. By not including the operations in the budget, their costs were not considered "baseline" spending. And so not baked into the future Federal budget projections that are run out to 10 years. But the costs were not hidden in any way. They were always "accounted for".

When Obama heralded putting the operations into the budget, that just meant that when those operations ended as intended, that he'd claim that the disappearance of the spending was a "budget reduction". Which it plainly wasn't.

Note that since the Democrats have failed to actually pass a budget since FY 2009, as an intentional political strategem, they have not had to produce a document with that 10 year projection at all. And avoiding the responsibility of the required statutory 10 year budgeting provisions of Federal law is the purpose of not passing a budget. Pretending that including the war operations in the base budget was a virtue and then not producing a budget really puts paid to the fiction of Democrats being more fiscal responsible.